Christa Patrylak - CMO, Sparq
Assassin's Creed and Just Dance were Christa Patrylak's early work. At Ubisoft she grew a digital team from two junior marketers to ten and doubled budgets year over year while handling 21 game launches. HBO hired her next, where she spearheaded digital and social for more than 45 programs a year including Last Week Tonight, Silicon Valley, and Veep, then moved into retention and product marketing to lead the shift from a content business to a data-driven subscription one, implementing two martech platforms along the way. SoulCycle brought her in after the founder's exit and the Equinox acquisition, where her full-funnel work delivered more than 20% year-over-year growth. At Compass she co-led marketing as the SoftBank-backed brokerage became a tech platform valued at $7 billion pre-IPO, generating $1 million in profit and a 246% lift in adoption while building the company's first segmentation across 15,000 agents. Sparq, the AI-native engineering services firm, made her CMO in January 2026. Patrylak also advises at Atlanta Tech Village and has maintained nearly 100% retention across the teams she has led.
Philip Dolan - CMO, CINC Systems
FRONTLINE flea and tick control grew 120% to more than $500 million under Philip Dolan, the strongest five-year sales growth of any brand in the history of animal health. He ran Merial's largest profit center, $750 million in revenue across FRONTLINE and HEARTGARD. Consumer packaged goods trained him first, across six years at Colgate-Palmolive, two at Heineken USA, and four at Coca-Cola. Then he switched to software and stayed. As Waystar's first CMO he spent eleven years watching revenue grow from $9 million to $300 million, through a recapitalization with JMI Equity, an exit to Bain Capital, the Navicure and Zirmed merger, and the 2018 rebrand. CMO roles at Bluefin Payment Systems, MemberClicks, and Personify followed, the last of which promoted him to chief growth officer leading a 60-person sales and marketing team. He was also the first commercial leader at the healthtech company Valer. CINC Systems named him chief marketing officer in 2025, marketing community association software serving nearly 1,000 management companies and more than six million residents.
Molly Battin - SVP & CMO, The Home Depot
Molly Battin started as an assistant brand manager on Sprite at Coca-Cola. CNN made her VP of marketing in 2000, the beginning of a long run inside Turner. She spent years there in brand development and digital platforms, launched a new health and wellness brand called upwave as its SVP and general manager, and served as chief media and business insights officer. Turner then made her executive vice president and global chief communications and corporate marketing officer, a title she carried into WarnerMedia as chief corporate marketing officer and chief brand strategy officer. Delta Air Lines hired her as SVP of global brand marketing in November 2019, three months before the pandemic emptied the skies. The Home Depot named her senior vice president and chief marketing officer in September 2022. Nearly her entire career has been built within a few miles of where she works now.
Ranjan Goswami - SVP & Chief Marketing & Product Officer, Delta Air Lines
Route planning is where Ranjan Goswami began in aviation. He joined Northwest Airlines in 2004 as a senior analyst on North America routes, then managed Pacific route planning, then moved into product development and CRM. Delta absorbed him in the merger, and he has now been there nearly nineteen years. His path is unusually operational for a marketing chief. He ran customer experience planning, then e-commerce, where he merchandised non-air products across digital channels and handled inflight entertainment, Sky Magazine, and wi-fi across more than 560 aircraft. Four years followed as vice president for Los Angeles and west region sales, then two as vice president of field operations for inflight service, managing the people who actually meet the customer. Since 2021 he has been senior vice president of customer experience, and in April 2026 the airline added chief marketing and product officer to the role. His career started as a consultant at Katzenbach Partners.
Rebecca Schultz - CMO, USIS, Equifax
Debit cards and checking accounts occupied Rebecca Schultz for most of a decade. At Ally Financial she spent more than eight years, running the debit rewards program, handling compliance with the Durbin Amendment, then leading product strategy for interest checking, online savings, money market accounts, and the debit portfolio, and finally launching the first Ally Bank-branded consumer credit card. GE Capital trained her before that, where she managed a $14 million budget driving credit acquisition for Dillard's $1.3 billion private label and American Express portfolios. Bank of America Merchant Services then hired her for product and co-op partnership marketing, and she rose to senior vice president of strategic marketing for the merchant services business. Boost Payment Solutions made her chief marketing officer for nearly five years. Equifax named her CMO of its US Information Solutions unit in August 2026. Twenty years in payments and financial services sit behind that, spanning both B2B and consumer work.
Shakir Moin - President, Marketing, Coca-Cola North America
Shakir Moin has marketed Coca-Cola on four continents. He joined in Pakistan in 1996 as a brand manager, after four years at Gillette, then moved to Malaysia, then Singapore, running marketing for each. He became general manager for Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei, then marketing director for the Philippines, then brand director for Asia Pacific, then marketing director for ASEAN. China came next. As vice president and chief marketing officer for Greater China and Korea he led more than 100 marketers across brand management, content, design, innovation, e-commerce, and digital for the company's third-largest operation worldwide, with revenues above $9 billion. Atlanta followed in 2017, where he led global strategic initiatives and then served as chief of staff and head of global growth operations for the growth function. Costa Coffee then took him for three and a half years as chief operating officer and finally interim chief executive. Since January 2023 he has been president of marketing for Coca-Cola North America.
Laura Knebusch - SVP, CPG Marketing and CX, Georgia-Pacific
Five years of classic brand training at Procter & Gamble preceded everything for Laura Knebusch. Georgia-Pacific hired her in 2008 as a senior brand manager, and she has been there fifteen and a half years across eight roles. She was brand director for premium paper towels, then for Dixie, then senior brand director for Dixie and Vanity Fair tableware, then senior director of shopper insights and marketing, then vice president of marketing activation. Two general manager roles followed, first for napkins and then for paper towels and napkins together, giving her P&L ownership rather than marketing ownership alone. In 2020 she became vice president of consumer experience, and since September 2023 she has been senior vice president of CPG marketing and CX. Her team spans media, creative, design, e-commerce, digital marketing, shopper marketing, martech, and innovation. The brief, as she frames it, is transforming how consumers relate to the brands through purpose, data, and technology.
Chris Lyn-Sue - Global CMO, Papa Johns
A croissant pizza took a year to develop, and Chris Lyn-Sue launched it in Dubai. He holds two roles at Papa Johns: global chief marketing officer since August 2026, and SVP managing director for international since May 2025, a general manager job with P&L responsibility for more than 2,500 restaurants across four regional hubs. That business has swung comparable sales 800 basis points and delivered seven straight quarters of positive same-store results under him. Spirits came first. He spent twelve years at Bacardi, most of it on Grey Goose, where as Americas brand director he owned a nine-figure advertising budget and delivered nine-figure profit. His Off Script series with Jamie Foxx drew 28 million Facebook Watch views and made Grey Goose the first spirits advertiser on the platform. Earlier he created the Kings of Culture portrait program with artist Kehinde Wiley honoring Spike Lee, Carmelo Anthony, and Swizz Beatz. Restaurant Brands International then hired him to lead global brand marketing for Popeyes, where he ran the Megan Thee Stallion partnership. His career began marketing CBS Sports products, including the Emmy-winning March Madness on Demand.
Sarah Crockett - Global CMO, Carter's
Sarah Crockett reversed a multi-year decline in her first year at Carter's. She leads marketing across the enterprise and its four brands, Carter's, OshKosh B'gosh, Skip Hop, and Little Planet, and her first twelve months produced measurable gains in awareness, consideration, familiarity, and relevance, alongside a new go-to-market operating model, a restructured marketing organization, and an overhauled martech stack and agency ecosystem. Outdoor retail came before. At Backcountry she ran marketing for a portfolio including Competitive Cyclist, MotoSport, and Bergfreunde, launching streaming TV, audio, YouTube, direct mail, and podcast channels. Dickies then made her global CMO, where she grew direct-to-consumer from 10% toward 30% of the business, completed brand foundations work for a hundred-year-old workwear label, and built collaborations with Supreme, Gucci Vault, and Jameson. A year at DSW followed, where she launched seven new marketing channels and established the company's first marketing channel analytics function. Crockett has served on the boards of Stance and Rumpl and on Google's Retail Advisory Council, and is a trustee of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America's southeast region.
Leah Rasori - CMO, Global Payments
Fifteen years at Verifone gave Leah Rasori an education in acquisitions. She led marketing integration for more than 25 of them, built the corporate communications and media relations function from nothing, and ran marketing activities through the company's 2005 IPO. By the end she was head of global marketing, covering corporate marketing, communications, product marketing, and field marketing for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific. First Data and then Fiserv occupied the following six years, where she ran marketing for small business, then global business solutions, then performance marketing across campaign management, martech product management, operations, and analytics. Sovos made her chief marketing officer in 2022, where she doubled marketing's contribution to the business at a B2B SaaS tax platform. Global Payments named her CMO in 2024. She holds an MBA from Mercer and a bachelor's from Georgia State, and is active in Pavilion, the CMO Collaborative, Paytech Women, and the Technology Association of Georgia.
What a Headquarters City Produces
Count the years these ten have spent inside a single Atlanta institution and the number is striking. Nineteen at Delta. Fifteen at Georgia-Pacific. Long runs at Turner and Coca-Cola that turned into something else without anyone having to move. A headquarters city rewards that kind of patience, because the jobs above you keep opening. What keeps the bench sharp is the other half of this list: the people who came in from gaming, premium spirits, outdoor retail, and prestige television, carrying instincts that a Fortune 500 marketing department rarely grows on its own. Atlanta gets both, and the combination is the point.